My boys 12 and 17 yrs. both know to NEVER bring any of their little buddies into my shop. Maybe I should obey the same rule. Recently one of my little buddies was in the shop with me. A nice guy who dug up some discarded stainless linear rails and Thomson bearings for me that I subsequently turned into a nice xy table for a mortiser. He is a full grown over-40 adult and he is also an engineer and so I didn’t think I needed to give him a lecture about not flipping on switches in a wood shop. In fact, I would have felt very embarrassed doing so. Well, he decided the big red paddle switch on my table saw was a switch cover and pulled it up – BUZZZZZZZ. Three HP 220v worth of BUZZZZZ! Thank God no ones hand or any other object was near the blade. I will never be too embarrassed to mention it again to anyone. Maybe a big sign I can point to would be best.

20 replies so far

+1 to the sign. Perhaps a nice routed sign that’s painted in contrasting colors of your choice. You could include a plexi-glass slot where each week you insert a new picture of some poor fella who got maimed in a wood shop. That way anyone walking into your shop is forewarned.

I have a sign on my TS asking politely that nothing sould be placed on the saw. After that, I’m gonna be hurtin’ anybody who plops anything on it. The important thing is that everyone be made aware of ANY signage.Bill

As am Engineer (Electrical type) I can honestly and unfortunately say the following:

1. They have never and will never offer common sense 101 at the university. 2. Engineers do a ton of theoretical based exercises and very few practical ones, meaning you actually have to go out of the way to learn about the tools used to create your pipe dreams. Usually you come up with a 3D model and the purchasing guy or model shop delivers it to you in a couple days.3. Engineers tend to be overconfident. I am and it has bit me in the ass. We solve a lot of very complicated problems how big of a deal can cutting wood be?! You should see me trying to hand cut a dovetail or trying to align a lock mortise bit. Sailors could learn a few finer points on language use from me.4. We tend to latch on to old timers and try to suck the knowledge out of you ad nauseum. 5. We expect everything we do will turn out perfectly to the .001” We’re usually lucky to have tolerances in the .25” range, then we blame the material.